With the wind of adoption blowing hard in the sales of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, the latest Windows client from Microsoft is closing in on the 150 million sold licenses mark.

According to the latest statistics from Net Applications, Vista's market share has jumped over 1% in March, up to 14.02%. At the end of February, Vista accounted for no less than 12.92% of the operating system marker, but the past month represents an important milestone for the platform. Not only has Microsoft dropped the first service pack for Vista, but it has also announced price cuts for the Home premium and Ultimate editions of the operating system, in a move designed to stimulate the upgrading process from Windows XP. Available as of March 18, 2008, Windows Vista SP1 has yet to make its entire impact felt, however, it can only contribute to accelerating the update pace of the operating system.

Back in December 2007, data from Net Applications indicated that Vista had a market share of 10.48%. In January 2008, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates correlated the figure with an install base of over 100 million copies. The latest statistics made available put Vista right on track for the 150 million mark, earlier than mid-2008, which means that adoption is accelerating.

At the same time, Windows XP's market share continues to drop, and in this context Vista's predecessor is down to 73.59%. And while it was said that Mac OS X and Linux will have the opportunity to grab more audience because of Vista, the share of the open source platform is stagnating at approximately 0.6% for the past four months, this while Apple's operating system jumped from 7.46% in February to 7.48% in March. As such it is clear that Windows Vista's main growth comes at the expense of Windows XP, but that the latest Windows client has yet to grow on its own.